By Maria Lebron, September 2022
If you’re in an unhealthy relationship you have trouble leaving, you may be experiencing a traumatic bond. Traumatic bonding is the connection a person has with someone who causes them emotional and/or physical harm. These bonds can create a toxic and/or dangerous situation that continues to worsen and becomes more and more difficult to leave.
Traumatic bonds are thought to have developed from unhealthy attachments with people who were the person’s caregivers who were needed for survival. As children, we cannot leave toxic or unhealthy relationships, therefore we learn to stay in relationships where our abuser is also the one who we turn to for affection, support, comfort, and security. It then becomes difficult to separate those needs from a traumatic bond. A traumatic bond is mainly associated with familial or romantic relationships, but they can also occur in friendships, workplaces, religious groups, etc.
Early traumas or unhealthy attachments can make it difficult to distinguish between healthy relationships and a traumatic bond. Healthy relationships include safety, mutual respect, trust, honesty, accountability, and healthy boundaries that are respected. Traumatic bonds involve a complicated connection with someone who causes psychological, physical, and/or sexual harm. These bonds are based primarily on power and control and are enforced by intimidation, abusive behavior, coercion, blame, isolation, and possible aggression or violence.
Initially it may not feel like you are in a toxic relationship because the abuser may use charm and manipulation to gain your trust and affection. The traumatic bond happens when the abuser gives intermittent love and punishment and the abuse alternates with warmth. The abuser demonstrates more and more controlling and abusive behavior while mixing in warmth and remorse to keep the person in the relationship. The hope and desire to regain the abuser’s ‘love’ creates a powerful emotional bond that is extremely resistant to change. This traumatic bond develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and positive reinforcement, and can cause a person to rationalize the abuse, blame themselves for the abuse, or continue to hope that the bad times will end.
Trying to get back the abuser’s love and attention will cause a person be hypervigilent about angering the abuser and make them feel they need to do anything the abuser asks of them. This behavior is reinforced by the abuser when they blame the person for the abuse. Unfortunately, it is difficult for the person to accept that the loving part of the relationship is manipulative and conditional and that the abuser is incapable of genuine love.
This dynamic is often a familiar feeling and mirrors some childhood trauma. The abuse can cause pain, but it is a familiar feeling and brings up feelings that the abuse is deserved, that they are helpless or not in control, and that they are unworthy of respect and love.
Leaving a traumatic bond can be extremely difficult and it may be necessary to seek professional help to do so, especially if there are issues related to safety, finances, or children.
The abuser will try to keep control by reverting back to showing love and attention and promise that the abuse will end. The more the person needs to receive love, approval, and validation from the abuser, the more the traumatic bond is strengthened. There is an unconscious need to be validated and loved by the person that makes them feel unlovable.
Getting over the psychological impact of these relationships can take a long time and are difficult to break even when the relationship is over. The recovery process takes time, patience, and involves gaining a sense of control, self-esteem, competency, safety, and support. In the therapy, you will:
— learn the differences between an abusive relationship and a healthy one
— develop stabilization and distress management techniques
— build a support system
— get in touch with your own needs and identity
— gain an understanding of the factors which made you vulnerable to the abuse
— learn how to set proper boundaries
— learn how to build healthy relationships
— work on improving self-worth and self-care
— process any traumas that have not been resolved
